Decking the Offices

Year after year, city office workers find themselves surrounded by 20-foot trees, gigantic wreaths and over-size candy canes bedecking their usually drab buildings.

The yule tide that washes over Manhattan's office canyons isn't just done on the whim of festive landlords. The décor is actually big business for the decorating companies that plan it months in advance.

"There's so much attention being paid to, 'How does the trim look? How does the trim present to the general public what that company is about?'" said Kent Fritzel, chief creative officer for American Christmas, whose clients include Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden. "In many ways," he said, "Christmas décor becomes that company's Christmas card to the city."

In his 18th season as a decorator for the company, Mr. Fritzel leads a design team that searches for holiday trends that can be used in storefronts, plazas and lobbies, even heading to Germany to scout an annual Christmas trade show.

"This year in Europe, pink was huge. Pink in everything—in decorations, in wreaths, in ornaments, in florals," said Mr. Fritzel, who said planning a signature look for a company can actually be stressful. "Americans, in general, prefer a more traditional approach."

The decorations, from blinking trees to gigantic ornaments suspended from ceilings, aren't only a gesture of goodwill on the part of building owners—they are also a way to gauge the health of the local economy, said Garrett Peterson, vice president of Downtown Decorations.

The company provides Christmas décor for office buildings and shops across the country, as well as in the New York region. This year, the company sold a million lights, 1.5 miles of garland and, for one project alone, 40,000 ornaments.

The holiday window displays at big-city department stores draw huge crowds at this time of the year. Andria Cheng visits Saks for a look at this season's decorations and what it takes to design them.

ENLARGE

Decorators from American Christmas spruce up the Garden for the holiday season.
Pearl Gabel for The Wall Street Journal

A Downtown Decorations holiday makeover for a building or mall can cost up to $300,000. "Christmas decorations [are] a vital part of marketing for shopping centers and municipalities," Mr. Peterson said. But, he added, "when the economy turns down and there's not a lot of money to go around, it's the thing cut."

The Downtown Alliance, a group for Lower Manhattan's business district, has dedicated a part of its budget to an installation of lights for 17 years. The display of stars is meant to be nondenominational and to bring "sophisticated holiday charm" to the area, said Elizabeth Berger, the group's president. "I think it's a visual acknowledgment that it's holiday time," she said.

The towering tinsel and oversize lights draw the appreciation of many of the estimated 4.5 million tourists who will visit the city in the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, according to NYC & Company, the organization that keeps tabs on tourism numbers

But the décor elicits mixed feelings among hard-to-impress New Yorkers. For some, festive can mean gaudy. For others, the arrival of wreaths coincides with the influx of out-of-towners to already tourist-choked Midtown.

"They give me angst," Tamar Duvdevani, an attorney who works in Midtown, said of the decorations. "The thing I associate with them as a New Yorker of 16 years is that it's going to take me 10 extra minutes to get to the gym in the morning."

ENLARGE

Bob Soloff, chief a sales for American Christmas, sorts decorations in the lobby of Madison Square Garden.
Pearl Gabel for The Wall Street Journal

"The tourists in droves don't make me festive," said Justin Polomcean, a web producer. "But it looks better having [the decorations] up than not having them up."

Attorney Matthew Liebenson said he doesn't mind the decorations as long as they're not over-the-top. "Some are really an eyesore," he said, adding that it's nice that tourists are drawn to the festive trimmings—"until you get stuck behind them."

To those who are underwhelmed by the overwhelming amount of décor, James Conigliaro, owner of Cambridge Floral Designs, said, "In life we cannot please everyone, but I guarantee that 98% of people love it."

Mr. Conigliaro's company provides the decoration for SL Green's building portfolio, and the company's head of property management, Ed Piccinich, is effusive about the work, which he says is an "absolute must" for the company's buildings.

"I know when I come back after the New Year, when we decide when [the decorations are] all gone, it's almost like a fairy tale is gone," Mr. Piccinich said.

On a recent afternoon, Sharon Garlick, a teacher who lives in the Bronx, viewed a large installation of a tangle of Christmas lights outside a Sixth Avenue building with her 2-year-old nephew.

As a child, she had admired the holiday décor with her mother and she continues the tradition with her young relatives.

"To me, I could do without them," she says of the decorations. But, she added, "when you have kids in the family, it's a little different. These are things I grew up with as a child, and I want my children to experience."

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